


The Agitated Heart

by daystarsearcher



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daystarsearcher/pseuds/daystarsearcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Scribere Est Agere in the L&O Secret Santa. A look at how things might have gone if Moran had been right about Goren's mental state. On LJ under the title "I Made This Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monster to Please You."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Agitated Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I claim no credit, I make no moolah. Please don't sue me.
> 
> Also, while I did do research for this fic, I am far from an expert on issues of mental health. If I have made any mistakes, let me know and I'll do my best to fix them.

 

_Oh, and I'm so into you/ but I'm way too smart for you/ Even my henchmen think I'm crazy/ I'm not surprised that you agree…_

_\--Jonathon Coulton_

xxxxx

_We make ourselves a place apart_

_Behind light words that tease and flout_

_But oh, the agitated heart_

_Till someone really find us out._

_\--Robert Frost_

xxxxx

It started on his first case back from suspension.

The books.

It wasn't unusual for Bobby to raid the library mid-case, but this was the first time he'd ever needed an interview room to hold everything he'd checked out. And he kept leaving and bringing back more, ducking into his lair with three or four volumes clutched tight to his chest as though another detective might try to snatch them away.

Ross kept looking at him askance, and then directing a glare at Eames that plainly said  _What the hell is your partner doing?_ Because of course it was  _her_ job to know that, it was her job to keep an eye on Goren and take care of Goren and reel Goren in and keep Goren in line and smile and smile because wasn't she just so fucking  _lucky_  to work with a genius like him, wasn't she just living the goddamn  _dream_ —

(she still has dreams where her trigger finger slips and the top half of Bobby's head explodes)

So she met Ross' glare with a stiff little smile and slammed the videotape she had just been reviewing down onto her desk with more force than was strictly necessary, and made calls and checked up on alibis and re-interviewed witnesses and kept her chair very firmly facing away from the room where her partner (" _I'm your_ partner _." "Soon you're going to have to trust me, Eames_.") sat frantically flipping through page after page and jotting things down in his binder.

Once, when she was reviewing recent commercial flight plans out of JFK to Mexico, he plopped down in his chair. When he actually remained there for more than thirty seconds, she looked up. He was holding one of the criminology books he kept in his desk drawer open and scribbling on a piece of paper, adding to an already considerable mass of numbers: 0-590-62977-8 0-590-62978-6 0-590-62979-4…

Eames leaned over. "Care to clue me in?"

His head snapped up, and his face had such a look of sheer panic—but no, that didn't make sense, that didn't make sense at all—and then he  _snatched_  up the binder, clasped it to his chest as though she might leap across the table and tear it away, and strode back to his room—and locked the goddamn door. He actually…locked the goddamn door. And let down the blinds.

It was a blast of cold wind piercing straight through her, and the deep ache she usually persuaded herself she could not feel surged and swelled until she knew then that this was not the pain of a closing wound but the slow scraping away of her insides until she was nothing but a shell of raw skin and a hollow, echoing emptiness.

She stared at the grey blinds. Took a long, deep breath.

So he wanted to keep more secrets from her.

Fine.

Let him.

xxxxx

Looking back, she should have seen. If not then, then sometime in the next two weeks, when the books still kept piling up, and Goren would barely look at her, would hardly speak to her at all… She should have seen.

But she was trying so hard to  _not_ see so many things: the layers of dust collecting on the vacant desk and chair across from her; that sharp, bitter twist of her mouth in the mirror, as though she had bitten into life and found it sour and stale; the words that floated up from memory as she lay in bed and stared at the lifeless grey witching-hour ceiling:  _dissolution of trust…bizarre and volatile behavior…lack of respect for partnership…therefore, due to my concern for the impact on both his and my own safety, as well as that of others, I request…_

She didn't see.

Two weeks after she unraveled Kathy Jarrow's web of lies—no thanks to Bobby--and arrested her for murder, Eames saw. And everything went to hell.

xxxxx

Back-up was on the way, but no one else was there  _right now,_ and Bobby was in there right now, and she couldn't leave the kids on their own so she'd had to wait with them, whispering  _ssshh sshh ssshh everything's okay, everything's okay, this is just a game, sssh, we just have to be very quiet_ and holding them close and feeling the butterfly brush of their fine hair and the warmth of their little bodies, so close she could feel each tiny fragile heartbeat and sleepy yawn against her skin, and where the hell was back-up and a little boy put his arms around her and snuggled into her still half-asleep and ohGodohGodBobbyandshecouldn'tfucking _breathe_ and—and inside her chest there was a rip and something was pulling, yanking, tearing it further and further apart—

( _Oh God Oh God Oh God_ )

And the voices inside the room were growing louder, Marla's rising to a shriek, what the hell was he doing—

A thud and a curse, and before she could even process that three shots rang out and the children, startled, began crying, and fuck back-up—she drew her piece and burst into the classroom—

And ohthankGod Bobby was still standing, three bullet holes sprayed in the wall above his head and wham! Eames clocked Marla across the chin with her piece, wrestled her to the ground and cinched on the cuffs and the woman wouldn't stop screaming—"He won't help me, he won't make sense, nobody's helping me—"

And Eames didn't remember getting up but all of a sudden she was just hitting Bobby, punching his arms and his chest and his stomach, the blows falling like hail or tears—"You idiot, what the hell were you thinking? What the hell did you do? Are you trying to get yourself killed, are you—are you—are you—"

"She had the gun and then, in medieval times blue was considered a feminine color," Bobby said.

Her fist froze halfway to his shoulder. "What?"

"And pink was masculine, not like a waitress. She's guilty. I was thirsty in Tates."

 _Oh no. Please no._ And then he cocked his head at her and Eames realized she had said that out loud.

He was staring down at her, fear edging into the earnestness and confusion on his face—"I'm red eventually, tulip. Adverbs messed up but light bulbs are beautiful, and dancing box will show—"

Her hands were shaking and she had to put the gun down to touch his face, the rough three-day beard, and he flinched from her—"Bobby." Her voice cracked and she stopped. Swallowed, hard. The shape of his name stuck in her throat. "Bobby, you're not making any sense."

He backed away from her, shaking his head. He raised his hand to gesture as he opened his mouth—and shut it. Open—shut. Open—shut. Open— She stepped forward, reaching out again, and he crashed to his knees in front of her, his eyes pleading silently as his mouth opened and closed like a dying goldfish.

And he raised his trembling hands up to her own, as though he were offering up to her one tiny piece of his broken, monstrous, mess of a life.

xxxxx

Schizoaffective disorder.

That's what they were saying.

Maybe.

Too soon, of course, to be sure, too soon to just flip open the DSM-IV and plant a finger definitively on one list of criteria, one specific illness that the psychiatric community couldn't even agree was real or made-up or just a variation of one or a combination of two or more or a shade along a spectrum or or or or, too soon to say--

_(Schizophreniform disorder._

_Recurrent depression with psychotic features._

_Schizophrenia.)_

\--anything.

"It's highly unusual for any of these disorders to manifest at his age," Dr. Colfer was saying, absentmindedly polishing her large round glasses, "but not impossible. We'll keep him here for a standard thirty day observation period, at least, and if his prognosis is good we can start working on recovery and reintegration with society." She tried to smile kindly. "The nurses here all know him. He'll be in good hands."

Eames nodded, and it felt, like so many things had in the last forty-eight hours, as if it had been done by a completely different Alex Eames, one very far away. "When can I see him?"

Dr. Colfer hesitated. "We try to respect our patients' wishes as much as we can…as long as they're safe, we believe they have a right to—well, privacy and, and choice. Please keep in mind that right now he's feeling very frightened and uncertain…once he's had a chance to think about it, he may very well change his mind…" She sighed. "But for now, Mr. Goren had made it clear that he does not wish to speak with y—with anyone from outside this facility."

Eames nodded. "Ah."

The icy cold wind whipped through her again, and she knew that however much of her there was left, it was still enough to bleed.

xxxxx

"I'm sorry," Dr. Colfer said when Eames called up for the fourth time that week asking how Bobby was and, too casually, if Bobby was ready to speak to anyone yet. The doctor sounded less sorry than irritated, and Eames briefly contemplated digging around Colfer's medical records and finding  _something_  to arrest her for malpractice with. "Why don't you write him a letter? We'll make sure he gets it."

"Thank you," Eames said, but only because she needed to say something more socially acceptable than  _Go to hell._

xxxxx

This was the thing about words, and the letters that made them up, and the fifty-nine cent CVS Pharmacy ballpoint pens that she tried to form them with until they ran out of ink halfway through:

They were completely useless.

This was the thing about Alex Eames' hands:

They would not stop shaking.

xxxxx

_Bobby, I hope you're feeling better. I_

No.

_Goren, Marla Reynolds pled guilty. Took a plea and_

No.

Three glasses of bourbon and her thoughts and handwriting both were about as steady and unswerving as a stripper on a greased pole, but she'd rather her partner see the drunken loops of her 'g's and 'l's than the jittery skittering of all the times before this night that she'd sat down and tried to set pen to paper.

_Bobby, I'm so sorry. Sometimes I wonder when this started, if it was after Tates, when you were on suspension, and I can't decide if that makes it any more or less worse. I'm thinking about going back to Olivet because I can't stop feeling like_

Fuck no.

_Bobby, I miss you._

She almost put that one in the envelope, but at the last minute she ripped it up.

_Goren, I'm going to keep calling until I can at least talk to you._

_I told Ross to go fuck himself yesterday, and he put me on two weeks paid leave. Guess I should tell him that more often, haha. I used the time to return all your books. Some of them already had fines; you owe me eight bucks. Or you can buy me coffee sometime._

_I mean it about the calling._

_Eames_

She put it in the envelope and sealed it before she could change her mind, and dropped it off at Carmel Ridge the next morning.

xxxxx

_Goren,_

_At least write back and let me know you're getting these, even if you can't talk to me or see me._

_I saw that someone had thrown out a bunch of old Smithsonians yesterday and it reminded me of you. I took two of them home, one on sequencing the horse genome and one on Constantinople._

_They told me you had a mixed episode, with disorganized speech as a result of formal thought disorder, and I actually didn't need them to explain it, thanks to you._

_There was a sale at Barnes and Noble the other day. I got some books, for me to do research on your condition, whatever they decide on. You've probably read all the current literature, but you could borrow these too, if you wanted. Or I could bring some from your apartment._

_Eames_

xxxxx

_Goren,_

_Is it raining up there? It's bucketing here._

_I went to some homeless shelters today, looking for Donnie. No luck. Went home and read for awhile._

_Please call me._

_Eames._

xxxxx

_Bobby,_

_Nothing's the same without you here._

xxxxx

She wasn't as drunk as she would have liked when she wrote that last one. Not enough plausible deniability. But she wrote it anyway, because she had to write something, because her letters were the only thing connecting her to Bobby and without them she knew he would fall away from her, swallowed by the silent blankness of the waiting white paper.

xxxxx

It was four a.m and even with the bourbon in her stomach and weariness pressing like an anvil on her shoulders, she couldn't sleep. The envelope sat on the table, thin and inadequate.

_Bobby,_

_Nothing's the same without you here._

Her clocks were all digital and made no sound at all as she sat in the kitchen waiting for none of this to be real.

She could have written more. She could have said,  _It's not the same because every day it feels like someone takes an ice cream scoop and scrapes more of me away, and when I have the nightmares I can't decide not to call you (like I always decided) because calling you isn't an option at all anymore._

_When I think of something funny I have to keep myself from turning my head to tell you, because I'm still mad at you and I don't want you to think I've forgiven you yet. And then I remember you're not there._

_I put down the phone after talking to my family about you and I can't remember anything I said but I can feel my throat torn up like the greeting card words were made of glass._

_I just want to see you. I realized yesterday that I have hardly any pictures of you and I'm terrified that I'm going to forget what you look like._

_Or the way your voice sounds when you're trying to make a joke. Or the way you move your hands when your mouth hasn't caught up to your brain yet and you're afraid I'll ignore you otherwise._

_I just want—_

But she couldn't say any of that, and she knew it. Couldn't add to his burdens with her own, try to make him shoulder her load in his already fragile state. She had to be the strong one, the anchor, the rock--

_(until I crack)_

_(Bobby, I'm going to crack)_

\--the constant. Neither of them could afford for her to be weak.

So she let those words run around her head, and left the ones on the page alone.

xxxxx

An hour later and Eames  _still_  couldn't sleep despite the type in the psychiatric texts blurring before her eyes, and her gaze kept getting drawn to the  _1001 Easy Origami Animals_  craft book her nieces had left behind two years ago and, well, fuck. Why not?

She wished the paper were a gun so she could force her hands to be steady, but after several false tries she managed to concentrate just on the paper, on making it line up perfectly, crisp folds and neat edges, breathe in breathe out, just follow the rules and you could make something beautiful.

A blue frog.

Red fox.

A pig, a bear, a penguin; pink, black, blue.

A crane with feathers of purple fans and blue blossoms against a gold and scarlet background. She was pretty sure she accidentally skipped a step with that one, but she couldn't work out where.

She finished with a silver fish and slit open the envelope, slipping in the whole zoo before resealing it.

xxxxx

Eames was driving home after dropping off the letter at Carmel Ridge—she had done that with all of the envelopes, couldn't stand the idea of them inching their way through the postal service, of never knowing if or when they got to Bobby—when it hit her, all at once:

_Maybe that was a bad idea. Maybe he'll take it the wrong way. What was the right way? There is no right way. You don't know what you're doing you just read some goddamn books that were in the half-off rack you don't even know him anymore what if the animals feed into his delusion somehow what if it offends him scares him what if they don't even give him the letters how do you know what if what if what—_

She pulled off to the side of the road, hunching over in her seat and hearing someone whisper "too much, too much, too much" over and over until she realized it was her and then she clamped down her jaw and gripped the wheel as hard as she could (fingers whitening) so she wouldn't fall and forced her heart to expand and contract and beat slower, slower, slower and tried, ohGod, tried so hard to remember how to breathe.

xxxxx

"You're…not supposed to be here."

His voice was so familiar she could have cried with hearing it, but she just let the door click shut behind her. One more small sound in the night. "I know."

"Bribe the nurses?"

She snorted. "Please." Leaned against the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark. "They're not going to risk their licenses. And even if I had enough money to make it worth their while, you've got them eating out of the palm of your hand. The minimum wage janitorial staff who've had to clean up a few of your temper tantrums, on the other hand…"

"Ah." A rustle, and she could make out a patch of darkness deeper than the rest as Bobby sat up in his bed. "Eames…what are you doing here?"

She looked away, eyes sweeping the rest of the room. "No roommate. You must have really poured on the charm for that one."

"Eames…"

"Don't interrogate me!" She stuffed her hands deep in her jacket pockets, paced to the other side of the room, the empty space where his roommate's bed would've been. "I just—I just had to see that you were okay. That you're—you're doing alright."

"I'm fine." Quick, automatic. "You can go."

She nodded. "Okay."

She didn't move.

More rustling, but a brief glance wasn't enough in the darkness to tell if he had moved closer or farther away. "You have to leave. If they find you…you, you could get arrested—you could lose your badge—"

"I know." She could feel it all slipping away from her, the ground sliding like sand from underneath her feet. "Just—I'll go, alright? I'll go and I won't sneak back. I won't even call or write if you don't want, but I just…"

She felt his eyes on her. Then, "I'm taking my meds." A deep, shaky breath and he continued. "I don't think that—that my mom is sending me secret messages though ISBNs about FBI conspiracies anymore. The, the thought disorder…was harder, and there were misunderstandings and they called a Code 21 on me twice when I first got here—b-but you…know that, don't you?"

The origami animals were lined up in a row on the windowsill. She went to them. Ran a finger over the edge of the penguin. "You put them out. I wasn't sure you'd keep them."

"You know because you…read my file. Didn't you?" His voice was closer now, though she hadn't heard him get up off the bed. "Record room's easier to get into than patient housing. Practical, Eames. You know how I'm doing, so why'd you come here?"

"I—" She swallowed, the burning pressure behind her eyes threatening to spill over. Shook her head, no no  _no_ , she was not going to talk about this…. "The crane is harder than it looks."

"I'm off the force, Eames." His voice was soft but his words were bullets. "We're not partners. You don't have to 'carry my water' anymore."

"Go to hell."

A hollow laugh. "Way ahead of you."

He was right behind her now; she could feel his presence: the heat radiating off his skin, the shadow he cast over her from the faint light under the door…and she had to shove her hands further into her pockets to keep from trembling because he was so close she could just turn around and touch him and God she wanted so bad to just  _touch_  him—hug him tight smash his face in run her hands up and down his arms pummel his chest--and she had to clench her jaw to keep her voice from wavering—"I've seen you almost every day for over seven years and now—now I don't—and I just—" Her voice broke. "I'll go. I'm sorry, I'll go."

She turned around to leave but he was right there and he put his arms around her and for a second she stiffened because they Did Not Hug, but then her arms were up and around him and her nose was mashed against his T-shirt and his hands were going up and down her back.

And he was so warm.

xxxxx

"I'll call," Bobby said suddenly. "Tomorrow. And we could talk about you coming for…lunch. Sometime."

Her hands gripped tighter at his shoulders for a second.  _Is this how you're going to blow me off?_ Out loud she said, "How's the native cuisine?"

He huffed what might have been a laugh. "Industrial-strength food served by industrial-strength cooks."

"Sounds perfect."

She took a breath and pulled away from him. "I should go."

He let go, stepped back. Rubbed at the back of his neck. "Yeah."

She still couldn't see his eyes.

xxxxx

The food was pretty much as he had said it would be. Eames poked at a boiled carrot with her plastic fork, and nothing gave.

"Sure they didn't give us the display models by accident?"

Bobby almost smiled.

They ate in silence for awhile, and then Eames nodded towards the nearest table. "You going to introduce me to any of your friends?"

"What? Uh, no." He pushed some meat—Eames assumed it was meat on the basis that it was brown and had no plant-like characteristics—around on his plate. "I haven't…really gotten to know anyone."

"Oh."

"It's not worth it. When we get out we'll never see each other again—we're not even supposed to use last names in here…so we can't try to find each other later."

"Okay." She chewed the carrot piece, and tried to swallow. It hurt going down. Would it be too much if she said—"I just don't want you to be alone in here."

"I'm not a  _child_." His grip on the edge of his tray tightened almost imperceptibly.

"I know you're not, but—"

"I'm fine," he snapped. "I had a psychotic episode, my IQ's the same as it's always been. I'm not  _helpless_."

 _You're not exactly firing on all cylinders either,_ she wanted to snap back, but only a slight tic of her jaw betrayed the composition of her face. "I didn't mean it to come off like that."

They each looked down at their own plates, avoiding each other's gaze. For awhile the only sounds at their table were Eames chewing and Bobby stabbing at his meat-like mass with a fork.

"Besides," he began, and she wanted to groan with how he could never let anything goddamn go—"Besides, you…you can come back, sometime. If you want to. If you're not—too busy."

She took a long drink of water until she could trust her voice. "I still have the same days off."

xxxxx

It was an unusually quiet evening: New York City was, if not sleeping, then at least slouching down a bit and resting its eyes. Alex was perched on the edge of her couch, cell tucked between her ear and shoulder, some stray paperwork spread over her knees and a carton of General Tso's Chicken on the coffee table. "And then Wheeler just looked at the two of us like we were insane—oh shit—"

"It's okay," Bobby said, his voice slightly tinny over the phone. "I'm not going to—to break down if you use a common expression."

She couldn't get out to see Goren as often as she'd have liked, but Eames had fallen into the habit of calling him after clocking out each day. They usually talked for around a half hour as she drove home and ate dinner, or took the ferry out to see her nephew. Sometimes—often—they ran out of things to say, or things they were willing to say to each other, and they would just be silent together for awhile.

"Are you sure?"

"It's nothing. So." He went into his Changing the Subject Right Now tone. "Do you know how much longer you'll be helping out Logan and Wheeler?"

"No idea. I hear Ross is angling to get Daniels assigned to Major Case, on a permanent basis this time. If that works out soon he'll probably stick me with him again."

"You…got along okay with him, didn't you?" There was something in his voice she didn't recognize.

"Well, I didn't ever literally bite his head off." Eames shrugged, forgetting Goren couldn't see her. "I could probably work with him."  _As long as he doesn't say anything more about you._ "On the other hand, I get the feeling Logan might be retiring soon, and then it'd make the most sense to put me with Wheeler. I could live with that. She's the best twelve-year-old in Major Case."

His laugh sounded forced. "I'm sure she'll be a great partner."

 _Not as great as you,_  Alex wanted to say, but she didn't say things like that, and he probably wouldn't believe her anyway. She cast around for something non-work-related to talk about, but the closest she could come up with was: "She kissed me, you know."

"What?"

Eames smirked and settled back into the couch. Now this was a great story.

"She probably doesn't even remember it. We all went out for drinks after the Miles Stone case, and she and Logan got into some sort of argument about how many times Harry Houdini had been buried alive, and then she drunk-dialed her fiancé…anyway, Logan actually voluntarily left the presence of alcohol early, so I got to make sure Freckles got out to her cab okay—"

"Freckles?"

"Logan calls her that all the time, it must've rubbed off on me. So--"

"I—I can't do this right now," Bobby interrupted. "I can't—I…I have to go."

"Bobby, what—"

But there was only a click, and then nothing.

xxxxx

Several days later, he called her, but she was chasing a suspect and it went straight to voicemail:

"Hey, Eames…it's, um, me. Sorry I haven't been able to take your calls…um, Dr. Colfer should've told you, but if she didn't, it's—I've having a, a bad reaction to my meds. They were making me really tired, and then they were trying to reduce the dosage, but that kind of backfired and so now I'm, um, on Abilify instead of Seroquel—hopefully that'll be a better match. I'm still on the Tegretol. They're starting me on these Omega-3 fatty acid supplements too, to help me sleep….it's kind of funny, I guess, too little, too much….Dr. Colfer doesn't think my depressive symptoms were severe enough to add SSRIs to the mix…

"Sorry, I'm, uh, rambling, I guess. I just wanted to let you know that—I can take calls now. If you want to call. And to tell you, I guess, that, um…that it's okay to be—mad at me, sometimes. For, for hanging up on you, or for…for the thing with Testarossa. I, uh, wanted to do this apology thing in person, but—you're not the same, Eames. You're trying so hard to be nice to me but you're still mad at me for that but you don't want to be and it's not the same and I know, I know it can't ever be the same again but I want—

"I want you, I guess, to be the way—the w-way you always were with me, and not taking any of my crap, and…and I guess in some ways you still are the same because you won't---inside, I mean, you—you won't ever let me know what—"

And then there was a beep, and he was cut off.

xxxxx

"Why'd you choose Carmel Ridge?" was the first thing she said when she got him on the line, during lunch break when she finally got the chance to check her messages.

"W-what?" It was obvious that he hadn't expected that line of attack. "It's…it's really advanced medically, and…they know me here. There's less…explaining." A pause. "Why?"

"Because there are closer places. Because I wondered."

"If it had anything more to do with my mother?"

She closed her eyes, rested her temple against the cool metal of the squad room lockers where she was making the call. "Yeah."

"I don't know."

"Is that some of the crap you say I shouldn't be taking?"

"I…don't know."

"Bobby…" She opened her eyes, stared out at the sea of desks and chairs. Strange how alien it could so suddenly look. "I don't want to be mad at you anymore." Deep breath. "I don't but I am, and it feels like where I was with this—it, it just got frozen instead of moving along the way it should've and—you said I'm different around you but I have to be or else I'll say or do something that—it feels like every conversation we have is a fuckup just waiting to happen—"

"So, you…want to stop?"

"No! That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't want to push you away ."

"Eames...I…" His voice was low. Pained. "I really am—sorry. For—for not telling you I was undercover, and for not coming to you about…this, when I first suspected, and—for getting you in that room, with Marla, and not being able to…" His voice broke off.

"Hey. We don't have to do this all right now. The observation period will be over soon, and then you owe me eight bucks worth of coffee."

He gulped a laugh. "You might have to wait a little longer for that."

"No standing me up, Goren."

"I…don't intend to, but—partly it's the meds and partly she thinks I can make more progress and…Dr. Colfer thinks I should stay here a while longer."

She was going to break. The cracks were spreading out from her spinal cord, jagged and sharp, and she was going to shatter into a million pieces. "How long?"

"I don't know."

xxxxx

They resumed their schedule. On one visit, Bobby gave her a gift. Or rather, he shoved it across the table in her general direction without quite looking at her.

"I painted this in…in art therapy. It's really bad, but I—I wanted you to…have it." He ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

She turned over the canvas. He had tried to paint a portrait of her—'tried' being the operative word. She swallowed a lump in her throat. "It is really bad."

"I know."

"I like it."

"You don't have to say that."

"I know. I still like it."

"The proportions are all messed up. And I couldn't get the right color for your eyes."

"Or my hair." She stood abruptly and walked to his side of the table and hugged him. Blotted her eyes on his shoulder. "I really, really like it."

xxxxx

Another night. Or rather, early morning. She was exhausted, floating in and out of sleep but he stayed on the line, and his voice and his breathing were a tide that pulled her out to sea and reeled her back in. Then—

"Eames?"

"Mmm…?"

"Think I'll ever get out?"

The way he said it, not so much scared as resigned, jolted her fully awake.

"Eames?"

"Yeah…I'm here." She took a deep breath. "You'll get out, even if I have to arrest everyone else there."

She could hear the smile flitting around the edges of his mouth. "On what charges?"

"On whatever the hell charges I feel like."

xxxxx

Eventually, Bobby was moved into the Recovery/Reintegration wing of Carmel Ridge, and it just made sense for Eames to pay for one of the rooms the hospital kept for friends and family when she had two days off in a row and wanted to stay overnight.

The staff turned a blind eye to the fact that she mostly ended up nodding off in the soft green armchair by Bobby's bed.

xxxxx

She was drifting off one night, feeling her eyelids grow heavier and heavier in the dark as she responded with noncommittal noises to the soft rumble of Bobby's nighttime voice, when she felt his hand on her shoulder. "Eames?"

Alex fought down a wave of disappointment. She'd hoped this would be one of the nights when he wouldn't wake her up to go to her room, when he'd let her fall asleep there. "Just a couple more minutes…"

"You're going to get a crick in your neck again."

"Fine." She stood, but Bobby's hand stayed on her shoulder. "I'm going," she grumbled.

"You don't…have to." His hand moved to her elbow. "You could stay."

"You just said…"

He let go and scooted over to the other side of the bed. Raised the deep blue blanket. "You could…stay."

She hesitated. The light through the grated window reflected in his eyes and the edges of the cloth, and everything else was swathed in darkness. "Okay."

She slipped in and he let the blanket fall, and they lay on their backs next to each other, not touching. The smooth cotton of the sheets felt dangerous against the skin of her upper arms.

"Night, Bobby."

"Night, Eames."

xxxxx

After that, there was an unspoken agreement that when she stayed over, they would share the bed. The blanket dipped down between them, and sometimes their fingers brushed as they turned in the night.

In the mornings, they went to the cafeteria and got coffee, and smuggled the cups outside to walk around the grounds, talking or not talking, matching strides through the dew.

xxxxx

One morning she got called out before they even got to coffee, and she was muttering curses as she rolled out of bed and tried to find her shoes, calling deprecations on the sexual practices of Wheeler's, Ross', Logan's, and the perp's respective mothers, when she caught sight of Bobby. He was propped up on his elbow, watching her and half-smiling.

"Something amuse you?"

The half smile became a full-on smirk. "I always wondered what you did after I woke you up to go to a scene."

"My dark secrets revealed," she said dryly.

He was looking at her with eyes that were for the moment free of shadows, and his shirt was rumpled, and he was smiling at her in the early morning light—she grabbed her overnight bag and crossed the room back to him. She went in to kiss his cheek and at maybe he moved in surprise, or maybe she miscalculated—

Her lips brushed across his mouth, light as a whisper.

xxxxx

It was almost a week before she could make it out to see him again. Their phone calls during that week were…careful. Slight pauses before speaking. Safe subjects—or as close to safe subjects as they had—and long silences. There was a waiting in the air. A feeling of trembling on the edge.

It was almost midnight when Eames slipped off the edge and into his bed.

Stillness.

Then, "My father's Mark Ford Brady."

She froze, the bottom dropping out of her stomach.  _No…not again—_ "Bobby…"

"It's not a delusion," he insisted. A rustling as he turned on his side to face her. "You can check with Rodgers—I—I asked her to run a paternity test."

_Oh, Bobby…_

There was a slow prickling behind her eyes as she stared straight up at the ceiling. "Why?"

"He—he kept insinuating…and I asked my mom and she said that she never knew, for sure, if I was…his…"

"No, I mean—" She turned towards him swiftly, burying her face in his shirt—his heart was beating double-time and hers sped up at the contact, overtaking his—and wrapping her arms around him. "I mean," she said, " _why_. Why this all has to…" his skin was hot even through the cloth—"happen to you"—she could feel the muscles of his arms as he put them around her—"why it  _always_ "—his breath on her hair—"I mean—"

She kissed him, hard, reaching up to tangle her fingers in his hair and pull his head down to hers. He made a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan as she pushed her tongue into his mouth, and then he was kissing her back, and it was so warm and right and needed—

He pulled away. "Eames—Alex—don't—"

She rolled to her other side. Squeezed her eyes shut in a futile effort to keep the tears from leaking out. Shit shit  _shit_. "Why not?"

"Because it's not fair t-to do this to me when I—I can't even be sure that it's real—" He choked on the last word.

"I'm real, Bobby."  _If I weren't it wouldn't hurt this much._

"I think you are," he said, and she was breaking, shattering, this was it, this was the end. "I—I know you are, but…I 'knew' that my mother was leaving me secret messages in library books, and…and what if this is just guilt, or you feeling sorry for me, or—"

"Stop! Stop it!" The tears were flowing freely now, and she scrubbed at her eyes with her fists. "It's not—I want—just want to feel again, and I want you to feel again, and I'm so tired of—even before this, of, of seeing you and wanting to—wanting so much, and—wanting, and not being able to—"

And then she couldn't talk because now he was crying too, hot tears against her shoulder where he was resting his head, and his arm came up around her waist and he raised himself up and leaned over and kissed her, soft and sweet.

He tugged gently at her until she turned back towards him, and then he pulled her close and rested his chin on top of her head. She took a deep, shuddering breath and felt again that flare of pain along all the scratched and scraped away nerve endings inside.

She was so empty.

His hands were rubbing her back, but she was trying not to feel it because if she let herself feel anything right now she was going to die.

"Alex…" He whispered her name like it hurt to let the syllables go. "Alex…" And then he was nuzzling her hair, and pressing his lips to her forehead, and planting little kisses all over her face, and it shouldn't be possible to actually, physically feel your heart break but she could feel each and every shard because this was the closest she had ever been to being with him and she still couldn't, never could, have it.

"If we…" He rubbed his thumb in a circle along her shoulder blade. "If we do this—I can't do this if it's just a, a one-time, get-it-out-of-your-system thing…I know I don't have any right, not after—but if you want to try…"

It took a second to process what he was saying. She looked up at him. "Are you…"

His eyes were dark with equal parts pain and desire. "Yeah. If you--"

"Good." She reached up and ran her hand over his cheek, his stubble rough against her palm. She kissed him again, and he kissed her back again, and she was shaking, or he was, or they both were. "Good."

Her hands roamed through his hair as his thumb slipped below her waistband and then froze. "Oh shit—Eames, I don't have anything…"

"Pill," she said, and nipped at his earlobe as he breathed a sigh of relief and went to work ridding her of her jeans.

And there was a lot of fumbling with clothes, and their feet keep getting caught in the sheets, but it was all okay because he was breathing, and she was breathing, and they were both alive and their skin was hot, no, scorching where they touched—her fingers gripped his shoulders tight, nails biting into his skin; he lipped and licked the pale curve of her neck—and they were touching, and they were moving,  _together_ , and then—

xxxxx

They slept through the cafeteria's breakfast hours the next day, drifting into consciousness only long enough to tighten their grip on each other before slipping back under. Later there would be time for complications. For acknowledging the existence of a world outside of them and the bed and this beautiful ugly complicated new thing that they had given each other, that was fucked-up but also was  _theirs._ But for now…

For now they were both breathing. Both alive. Together.

And they were so warm.


End file.
